I Heard There Were No Waves in New Jersey: Surfing on the Jersey Shore 1888-1984

A love letter to the beaches and boardwalks of the Jersey Shore, this is the first visual history of the passionate surf culture that has thrived on the Atlantic coast of New Jersey, and its influence on the worlds of surfing, skateboarding, and beyond.

Often overlooked for the warmer waters of its Hawaiian and Californian counterparts, the Atlantic coast of New Jersey has inspired a surf culture all its own, and in turn has held unsung influence over the history of the sport in America.

Drawing on archives of photographs and ephemera from private collections, and from those held in the New Jersey Surf Museum and New Jersey Surfing Hall of Fame, this is a celebration of East Coast surfing, from its pioneering beginnings at the end of the nineteenth century to its heyday in the 1980s as the scene converged with skateboarding and a shared influence on street style.

Alongside insightful texts that illuminate previously unheralded moments in the evolution of the sport, the book not only introduces some of the greatest unseen surf photography of the last century but also lets the Jersey Shore take its rightful place in the history of American surf culture.